ARGUMENT: THE RISKS OF WEB3Extremist NFTs Across Blockchains
While tech companies, politics, and civil society continue to discuss how to regulate social networks, a new age of the internet is dawning: the Web3. Julia Handle and Louis Jarvers write that with the technological advancements of Web3, it is critical to examine their application to extremism.
Extremists make use of the internet just like everybody else does—only with different intentions. From sharing of information on “classic” websites and active recruitment in closed chat rooms to propaganda via social media platforms, the internet has served as an enabler for recruitment and radicalization.
Julia Handle and Louis Jarvers writein Lawfarethat while researchers agree that the internet is rarely the sole driver of radicalization, it absolutely acts as a facilitator. “When trying to prevent or counter extremists’ use of the internet, organizations frequently face the same issue: They are too late. Often, extremists are faster to move to new platforms, escape efforts at deplatforming, and quickly adapt to the latest developments and trends.”
The continue:
While tech companies, politics, and civil society continue to discuss how to regulate social networks, a new age of the internet is dawning: the Web3. Characterized as a “decentralized online ecosystem based on the blockchain,” Web3 comprises distributed ledger technologies (and buzzwords) like cryptocurrencies, the metaverse, (non-fungible) tokens (NFTs), and smart contracts. More and more, private firms are rushing to invest in distributed ledger technology, and banks project astronomical values of Web3 in 2030.
These developments are raising questions about security and abuse: Cryptocurrencies are already notorious for funding terrorism and extremism—so what happens if NFTs with extremist content are now sold to fund white supremacists? What happens when the virtual reality avatars and metaverse spaces no longer appeal only to game nerds but are used by terrorists as training camps or perimeters to plot attacks? What happens when distributed file systems based on blockchain technologybecome (even) more prominent storage and exchange facilities to share bomb-making instructions or fascist propaganda?
With the technological advancements of Web3, it is critical to examine their application to extremism. To better understand the connection between NFTs and (far-right) extremist content, the authors of this article recently collected 7,500 NFTs and their metadata from 11 blockchains. In this piece, the authors provide a summary of this analysisand discuss the need for more research toward understanding the societal impact of Web3. While NFTs may not yet be a major ground for extremism, it is nonetheless critical that researchers work now to understand security threats on the Web3—the future of the internet—in order to address them moving forward.
